Discover popular poems and novels in the Tang Dynasty.
As one of the greatest masters of Chinese studies in China in the early 20th century, Wang Guowei is politically conservative, but his academic attitude is quite open. On the one hand, he adhered to the tradition of Gansu's simple learning, on the other hand, he devoted himself to the combination of western learning and Chinese learning; For a long time, he devoted himself to the textual research and interpretation of China traditional classics and Zhong Ding inscriptions, inscriptions, stone scriptures and Oracle bones unearthed in the Central Plains, and also paid great attention to the textual research and revision of bamboo slips unearthed in frontier historical places and western regions.
In 1930, Chen Yinque prefaced Dunhuang Robbery of Chen Yuan, saying: "There are only three Chinese writings among the Dunhuang scholars in the world." Although it is not clear who the "three numbers" refer to, Wang Guowei is definitely one. His research on the manuscripts published in Dunhuang Tibetan Sutra Cave during the pioneer period of Dunhuang studies has far-reaching influence all over the world.
Communication with Japanese scholars
1900, ancient manuscripts were discovered in Dunhuang Tibetan scriptures cave. 1907, the Englishman Stein came to Dunhuang and brought a large number of manuscripts and artworks back to Europe. The following year, pelliot, a Frenchman, also came to Dunhuang and took away a batch of treasures from the Tibetan Sutra Cave. 1909 In September, Pelliot came to Beijing from Hanoi, where the French Far East Institute is located. When buying books, he showed these newly discovered documents to China scholars. Luo Zhenyu, Jiang Axe, and others all went to visit and transcribe, and Wang Guowei followed, but he did not engage in transcribing and textual research, because his interest at that time was mainly concentrated on the Song and Yuan operas. Soon, the news of pelliot's discovery of Dunhuang ancient books spread to Kyoto, which attracted the attention of famous scholars such as NeiTojiro and Kano Naoki.
19 12 In September, Naoko went to Europe to inspect and copy the unearthed documents obtained by Britain, France and Russia in Dunhuang and Black City in northwest China. During this trip to Europe, Naoshi _ Kanno Tree got limited information, but it is still of great benefit to academic research.
19 16 Naoshi _ Kanno Shu points out that popular literature, which began to flourish after the Yuan Dynasty, actually sprouted as early as the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, according to the manuscripts of "Into the Ghost" by Emperor Taizong, "Playing the Wife" by Hu Qiu and the Wu Zixu novels he saw in Britain and France, and according to the rhymes of "Dong Yongchuan, the dutiful son" and "Jibusong". 1920, on the basis of Naoshi _ Kanno's study of Dunhuang popular literature works, Wang Guowei published the article "Dunhuang Tang Dynasty popular poems and popular novels", pointing out the significance of Dunhuang popular literature works in the history of China literature.
Naoshi _ Kanno Tree and Wang Guowei are both simple scholars. They have a profound friendship, and they have many common academic viewpoints, which inspire and promote each other academically. For example, they all use Dunhuang materials for research, but they are not limited to the scope of Dunhuang studies. They not only made great achievements in the history of Dunhuang studies, but also became outstanding in other fields.
The great achievements of popular literature
Due to the massive outflow of cultural relics from the Tibetan Sutra Cave, the urgent task of early Dunhuang studies is to copy and publish the Tibetan volumes lost overseas, catalogue the domestic cultural relics and conduct case studies. For Chinese and Japanese scholars at that time, the most efficient way was to write a concise preface and postscript on the basis of sorting out, publishing and recording articles.
Dunhuang documents have provided extremely important help for Wang Guowei's academic research, such as textual research of the full text of Fuqinyin. Wei Zhuang's ode to Fu Qin was written in the Tang Dynasty and copied from two works that Stein brought back to London. These two works are incomplete before and after, with neither title nor author's name. Because of Wang Guowei's extensive knowledge and powerful knowledge, only two sentences in Wei Zhuang's "Fu Qin Yin" recorded in "The Tale of the North Dream" can tell that this is lost.
On the basis of the postscript, Wang Guowei published Dunhuang Popular Poems and Popular Novels in the Tang Dynasty on 1920, and introduced Yin, Ji Busong, Dong Yongchuan, Chunqiu Yi, Tang Ci and Yunyao Collection Zaqu in turn, and also spent a lot of space on the Dunhuang version of Taigong Family Instructions.
1in the summer of 925, Wang Guowei gave a public speech to students in Tsinghua, entitled "China's newly discovered knowledge in the last twenty or thirty years". In the third book "Scrolls Written by the Tang People in the Six Dynasties in the Thousand Buddha Cave in Dunhuang", he specifically stated that "all belong to the National Library of Paris, and those who are hidden in Britain are Wujin Dong Shoujing (person), Japanese Dr. Jian Ye (person) and Dr. Haneda (person). It can be seen that the British-Tibetan Dunhuang manuscripts copied by Japanese scholars at that time were still being sorted out and not yet published, so Wang Guowei's academic achievements were of "pioneering" significance, especially the early sorting, introduction and research of some important literary works in Dunhuang manuscripts, which not only promoted the publication of relevant materials one after another, but also laid the foundation for Dunhuang literary research to a certain extent.
Wang Guowei emphasized that "the inquiries about new learning in ancient times were mostly due to new discoveries". His early research on Dunhuang manuscripts set an example for correctly handling the relationship between new materials, new methods and new problems, as well as the relationship between Manabu Nakanishi. The documents of Dunhuang Tibetan Sutra Cave show many precious new materials to the world, and also put forward many brand-new topics, forming a "new academic trend of the world". Because western scholars have used the methods of modern archaeology, philology, cultural origin and comparative culturology, even in the early days of the formation of Dunhuang studies, China scholars have already contained a lot of "western learning" elements; Most of the documents in the Tibetan Sutra Cave are written in Chinese culture, but there are also many words and materials of other nationalities in the western regions, which contain a lot of materials and information, which not only goes beyond the scope of "national studies", but also requires researchers to have a deep knowledge of "old learning". Therefore, using new methods and materials to explore new problems has become the key to the development of Dunhuang studies.
Wang Guowei is most concerned about the contents that can put forward new questions, new clues and draw innovative conclusions in the study of China's literary history, paying special attention to the similarities, differences, complementarities and origins between the new Dunhuang materials and the old ones, and to some extent, constructing a new perspective, new theory and new framework for the study of China's literary history. Later, many domestic scholars, such as Liu Fu, Hu Shi, Zheng Zhenduo and Wang Zhongmin, devoted themselves to the collation and research of Dunhuang popular literature works. It can be said that Wang Guowei made a pioneering contribution to China's "History of Popular Literature".